The Messaging and Connectivity User Group South Asia was launched in 2008 to bring together the users of the WebSphere messaging and connectivity products in the India / South Asia region. The objective of the group is to exchange user experiences and share knowledge. The regular features at the meetings include updates/presentations from IBM on the WebSphere Messaging and Connectivity product range, demos and User presentations. The group has been having face to face meetings in Bangalore and the last event was a day long event held at the Pride Hotel, Bangalore on 29th July 2010 attended by users from 25+ firms. The group is now seeking to expand and invites users from other cities to join the group.

The group will be represented by H R Sridhar, the leader for this group in IMPACT 2011 in Mumbai. He will be addressing a session on the facilities offered by the Global WebSphere Community for all the members of the WebSphere User Group community. The session will also provide updates on the activities of the Messaging and Connectivity User Group South Asia and its future plans.

This will be followed by a presentation on What's new in Messaging and ESB.

Do join in at the IMPACT 2011 event and hear from the IBM product experts.

Impact2011 conference on May 31st at Grand Hyatt, Mumbai event covers several interesting topics. There's going to be interesting discussions around the WebSphere Application Server and its new release version 8.0. The new version of WebSphere Application Server v8.0 has introduced a number of features and enhancements towards building an agile business environment and extend the reach of web applications to mobile devices.

Here are some of the quick highlights that I could drew on what's new in WAS v8 from a system management perspective.

Installation Manager and Centralized Installation Manager A complete new experience to install products that results in faster time to value and lower operational costs. It brings a single user experience across WebSphere, WebSphere Components and various other IBM Products. So effectively, a single IBM Installation Manager can manage the product life cycle for any IM based products from WebSphere, Rational, etc,. The newer install and maintenance technology allows you to install the desired level of service in one pass without needing to install GA product first and then apply fix pack and/or interim service fixes as a separate step. The Centralized Installation Manager from V7 is also re-based on the new Installation Manager which would help large enterprises by leaps and bounds on lowering their operational costs.

Recovering and Moving Nodes It has never been easier to recover from a damaged nodes with the new WebSphere V8 addNode -asExistingNode option that allows you to recover a damaged node without having to stop using the dmgr. This feature is also faster as it does not require taking a backup and restoring the dmgr's configuration which is quite important if you are managing a larger cell deployments.

Monitored Directory Deployment The feature that I love!. The application deployment is now just a matter of a file copy operation. To install an application all you need to do is to copy the application to a directory, and to uninstall just remove the application from the directory. This holds good for applications such as EAR, WAR, EJB JAR and SAR. Also there is Enhanced Properties File Based Configuration format for easier editing of application deployment options.

Apart from this there are also new SDK commands (managesdk and wsadmin) introduced in WAS v8 with the goal of having a common API for all supported platforms.

WebSphere Application Server Version 8.0 focuses on three primary goals:

Speeding your delivery of applications and services

Enhancing operational efficiency and reliability

Expanding the security and administrative control of the server

Some of key features in V8:

Speeds the development and test lifecycle by providing “self-service” access to consistent topologies and patterns through the WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition and the IBM Workload Deployer.

Faster to edit, compile and debug is through a new feature that permits you to use a monitored directory. Application contents, including complete applications and/or modules, can be moved into or out of the monitored directory.

Rich set of feature packs for programming model support

Java EE6 expands greatly the developer value that was first introduced in Java EE5, which was a core programming model in Version 7

Sterling Commerce acquisition was one of the biggest acquisitions by IBM. In addition to enhancing IBM's integration and commerce offerings, Sterling Commerce also complements IBM's industry-focused software including the company's frameworks supporting the retail, manufacturing, communications, health care and business industries.

More than 18000 global customers rely on Sterling Commerce's offerings, including large companies such as Boston Market, Honeywell, Monsanto and Pitney Bowes. Outside the United States, Sterling Commerce's customer list includes leading manufacturers like Toshiba and top retailers such as Auchan and John Lewis. The acquisition builds on IBM's growing portfolio of industry software solutions designed to help companies automate, manage and accelerate core business processes across marketing, selling, order and fulfillment.

The IBM Sterling Business Integration Suite enables companies to solve their integration challenges, both inside and outside of their enterprise, with a comprehensive set of solutions rather than multiple solutions requiring complex, cross-vendor implementations.

Some of the benefits are - faster and easier partner on boarding, more effective communication with trading communities, secure and reliable movement of massive amounts of data, visibility into business activity for predictable performance and improved SLA compliance driving more business.

The Sterling Business Integration Suite is a comprehensive set of market-leading solutions that address the critical challenges of:

IBM Sterling B2B Integration - Solving challenges between a business and its trading partners, including customers, suppliers, banks and transportation providers

IBM Sterling Managed File Transfer - Solving the challenges of large file transfers that need to be fast, secure and reliable, whether within companies such as retailers or banks, or between companies such as manufacturers and dealers.

More choice in deploymentSterling Business Integration Suite is available in a variety of deployment and operational models to meet your business needs, and can be delivered on premise or as-a-Service.

IBM Sterling Selling and Fulfillment Suite enables you to control your complex supply chain process from order capture to fulfillment. It allows you to manage the collaborative process with your customers, suppliers and logistics partners—for any offer, any channel, any supply.

Some of the benefits are - increase market share by offering a unified buying experience across all of your sales channels , improve the customer experience by enabling customers to order from anywhere and pickup from any location and reduce costs and improve productivity by managing your selling and fulfillment processes.

The Sterling Selling and Fulfillment Suite include :

IBM Sterling Multi-Channel Selling—transforms how you sell products and services across all of your sales channels, and optimizes your order sourcing and delivery processes.

IBM Sterling Selling and Fulfillment mobile applications - Extends access and control of your selling and fulfillment operations to mobile devices. These applications enable you to deploy a mobile commerce site and permit store associates to locate and reserve available-to-promise inventory and complete customer orders, enable administrators to monitor order management system status and performance anywhere, and allow carriers to respond to and manage shipment tender requests.

Be ready with successful strategies when executives ask for your help to create better business results -[ WebSphere Impact 2011]